Hand-held terminals for receiving, storing and transmitting information typically do not have printers attached thereto. On the other hand, certain devices such as calculators often do have a printer built in to the same housing as the calculator itself. There are so many different hand-held devices, some of which need to eventually be connected to printers and others which do not. The industry has generally designed terminals or the like to meet each different customer's needs. This has resulted in thousands of products which are separately designed and manufactured and which do not share common parts with other similar products.
The result has been higher manufacturing costs and consequently a higher cost to the consumer than would be possible if some sort of modularity or an interchange of common parts could be used. Furthermore, if the customer decides to use different equipment, then this would often mean scrapping the previously used equipment and purchasing entirely new equipment.
Consequently, there is a need for a modular terminal and printer concept which is configurable to the customers' needs and expandable by still using the same basic parts, but interchangeably adding other parts thereto as desired.